January 2011

The title of this post could more accurately be titled, “what I did with my holidays!”

Discovering that our house here in Newlands is at times damp, we’ve put aside enough money to get some ventilation put in. The big job is getting a hood over the cooker (it has to be vented through the roof – a DIY I’m not willing to take on), but the bathroom was simple enough.

When we lived in Cuba Street we had vents continuously pushing air into the bathroom and toilet, and no extractor fans. Sometimes when the weather really packed in these vents would stop working and the bathroom would get very humid. “Odd”, I thought, “conventional wisdom says always extract”. Upon discovering that putting an extractor into the bathroom would be a BIG DEAL, I remembered Cuba Street and resolved to use a similar fix up here.

Now, Newlands is a strange place. We’re very high up, so at times what appears to be fog rolls across the property and past the house. I say ‘appears’ because it’s actually low cloud. Awesome.

When said cloud wafts across the house it also enters it, making the place slightly humid once it departs, which is best remedied by opening the windows (and if possible, doors). This usually dries the house out quite a bit, but the bathroom is a little difficult because of it’s location. So, realising that the dampness in the house is not a problem with the house itself (it isn’t humidity from groundwater for example), I thought that decent ventilation could be brought in, and while it might only push the water to another room, those rooms can be easily vented outside.